3D printers are devices that generate three dimensional objects through additive manufacturing (“3D printing”). A 3D printer creates (“prints”) objects that are arranged in a defined printable volume specified by an input file to the printer, in a manner analogous to how a conventional paper-and-ink printer receives a 2D electronic document as input. The printing volume is limited, so it is advantageous to fit as many objects as possible into it, for both production volume efficiency (more output for a given printer and period of time) as well as production cost (less wasted material and energy per printed piece). Using brute force computational techniques (e.g., testing each object across a plurality of positions, placed in relation to a plurality of different objects, where each object can have any of a plurality of orientations relative to one another) to determine an optimal configuration of a large number of objects in space has a prohibitive computational complexity. The problem is effectively unmanageable without mitigative measures.